


Please

by Jinmukang



Series: Whumptober 2020 [6]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: "Stop Please", Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Begging, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Hopeful Ending, Kidnapping, Misunderstandings, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Protective Batfamily (DCU), Restraints, Sneaking Around, Torture, Whumptober 2020, comic logic, is it non consensual drug use if the drug is used to give the whumpee a well deserved nap???, no more, no.6, these wanna be gangsters dont stand a chance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:40:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26850814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jinmukang/pseuds/Jinmukang
Summary: "Dick," Bruce tried, forcing his voice to remain calm and soothing, locking all the worry and gravel into a keyed box at the back of his throat. He approached slowly now, but Dick continued to cry anyways. "Chum, I'm here."A broken gasp. Bruce couldn't take it.He reached forward again and gently curled his fingers into Dick's blood matted and sweaty hair, stroking softly like he had always done whenever one of his children ended up in a hospital bed. Dick cried out like he'd been stabbed the moment Bruce touched him, but Bruce didn't back away this time."It's okay, Dick," he soothed, rubbing Dick's scalp through his thick locks like how Dick had always loved because... because Bruce didn't know what to do now. "It's me, it's Bruce."Dick continued sobbing, no recognition. Nothing. Just pain and sorrow and fear."Chum, open your eyes-"
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson & Everyone
Series: Whumptober 2020 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1946413
Comments: 50
Kudos: 320
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Please

**Author's Note:**

> Woah! Day six? now who'da thunk.
> 
> no additional warnings than what's in the tags! well... besides Bruce being a general angst meister. but we all know that's a given. Bruce is the angstiest boi in town and unfortunately, we love him for it.

One month, seven days, thirteen hours, and forty six minutes. 

Exactly one month, seven days, thirteen hours, and forty six minutes ago, Dick went missing. Dropped off the face of the earth. He was last seen leaving work. Bruce knew he made it home, but his apartment was trashed by the time Bruce went over to check it out himself. Though, he had expected that. There had been a complaint called in from the downstairs neighbor about the ruckus.

However, it was a kind of "trashed" that was so unlike Dick. On one hand, Dick _did_ have a messy living space. It had been an issue ever since he had first moved into the manor as a boy. Alfred would always be on his case about picking up his laundry or tidying up the action figures that fell off his bookshelf.. And now that Dick was an adult, Bruce knew by now to give Dick a few hours heads up before heading over so he could attempt to at least make the place _presentable_ before company arrived. 

But on the other hand, this kind of “trashed” wasn't what Dick was oh-so fondly known for. Clothes tossed everywhere, hanging out from the skink and off the curtain rods. The left cushion of Dick's love seat had a giant cut in the material, like a giant scar, stuffing oozing out like blood. The TV Bruce bought him for Christmas was on its side, cracked and sporting a bullet hole through the center. 

The worst part was that the little compartment Dick had built into his apartment where he kept his suit was wide open, the contents thereof rummaged through carelessly. The suit and mask were missing, along with various high tech weapons, but the rest were strewn across the carpeted floor carelessly. Whoever had taken Dick; they knew he was Nightwing. Which meant Dick went down fighting as Nightwing. He wasn't holding back, he wasn't pretending to be anyone other than the powerhouse of a vigilante that he was. 

Which also meant that this was an all hands on deck sort of scenario. Dick's identity was compromised, which very well meant that everyone else could be figured out as well.

Besides, no one really minded being called in to help find Dick and the people responsible for his abduction. The compromised identities were just a font used to cover the fact that they all cared and were worried. 

One month, seven days, thirteen hours, and forty seven minutes. 

It shouldn't have taken that long, but it had. These people were professionals. The best of the best of Blüdhaven's underground ring of villains. Each hired for a specific purpose: figure out who Nightwing was, teach him a lesson, then take him out. Bruce, Tim, and Barbara could hardly find any information on the people who took Dick besides that. No cataloged fingerprints. No fines or tickets. No history of crime. Though, that wasn't at all shocking. Normally, the best of the best in the criminal world are people who haven't been caught yet. 

All of that added up as to why it took so long. Dick's initial abductors weren't even Blüdhaven natives. Just hired guns to barge in and grab him, then deliver him to the real people who wanted him out of the picture.

After one month, seven days, thirteen hours, and forty eight minutes, the people who had Dick now were a family of foreign mafia members who had set base in Blüdhaven generations ago. Dick had, apparently, about three months ago taken down a solid chunk of their scandals to make money by exposing the drug trade going on in one of the basements of Blüdhaven's many casinos. This was an act of revenge, and revenge was hardly quick and painless. 

Which could be a good and a bad thing.

Good because it meant—as Bruce, Cass, and Tim scoped out a decently sized company building (near the casino Dick exposed) exactly one month, seven days, thirteen hours, and forty nine minutes after his abduction—that Dick still could be alive. 

Bad, because it meant—as Bruce pointed where he needed Cass and Tim to enter the building and talked over his comm to give instructions to the rest of the family exactly one month, seven days, thirteen hours, and forty nine minutes after his abduction—that when they do find Dick, he wouldn’t be in good shape. 

There wasn’t any doubt about it. However they find Dick, it would be gruesome. Bloody. Filled with the stench of confinement and the reek of torture. 

The most they could do now was make sure the one month, seven days, thirteen hours, and fifty minutes since Dick's abduction didn’t become much longer. 

Bruce entered through a large vent built into the side of the building while Tim and Cass followed suit silently. Jason and Duke were to enter from the rooftop while Steph and Damian entered through the sewers. There wasn’t any telling where Dick could be—if he was being held in this building in the first place—but the building was large enough for it to warrant a whole lot of searching. It might only stand half a dozen stories high, but it had just as many stories going down into the ground as a series of basements. Tim had a theory that a wall in the lowest basement could potentially lead to another secret floor down below. 

Though, the only way to know for sure was to go in and check themselves. Blüdhaven wasn't as… documented, believe it or not, compared to Gotham. Blüdhaven was founded on scam and lies. Corruption ran so deep that it was everywhere you walked, like every person walking the streets and breathing in the air were glitching codes of ones and zeroes hiding behind innocent, lifelike masks. 

Searching through the building took time; time Bruce wished they didn't have to spend. One month, seven days, thirteen hours, and fifty minutes turned into one month, seven days, fourteen hours, and two minutes rather quickly. Too quickly. They stuck to the shadows of the building and focused on avoiding being spotted just yet—but sneaking took time, and Dick didn't have a whole lot of time left to spare. 

If he was alive at all. 

_No_ . No he was alive. Bruce knew it. He was somewhere in this building and he was breathing and he was _alive_. 

He had to be. 

Bruce didn't know what would happen next if he wasn't. 

Finally, one month, seven days, fourteen hours, and three minutes from Dick's kidnapping, Jason's voice whispered over the comms that he overheard a couple of grunts talking about Nightwing, and that he was in the secret level beneath the building like what Tim suspected existed. Bruce didn't say it out loud, but he was sure that Jason and Duke didn't overhear anything. They probably cornered a couple of mafia members in a dark, isolated janitor's closet and scared them until they spilled the information they wanted and probably soiled their pants during the process. Regardless, Bruce luckily took Tim's gut feelings into higher standing than most things. He, Tim, and Cass were already racing down into the basement levels. 

Steph and Damian said over the comms that they might take awhile to get there; as it turned out, these people were smart enough to set up motion detectors in the sewers connecting to the building. 

Eventually, they made it to the very bottom of the building where nothing was very interesting to see besides long, mostly empty hallways filled with various machines and generators keeping power to the activities above. There was the distant, muffled sound of loud electronic music, but that was to be expected because the floor above was a "secret" strip club. 

The three men playing cards on a dinky plastic table next to a bare chunk of wall was proof enough of Tim's theory of a secret room. Men with guns and a walkie sitting between them on top of the table for all to hear easily, don’t normally sit in shadowed spaces of basements. They were guarding something. 

Bruce stepped back, waving at Cassandra and Tim and pointing out their targets, but he didn't get far into his silent instructions before Cassandra lifted a hand to cut him off, her jaw set in a firm line beneath her dark mask. 

And Bruce understood. She had really stepped up to the plate when Dick was kidnapped one month, seven days, fourteen hours, and ten minutes ago. She had taken it upon herself to be happy and positive and comforting while everyone else could see that all she really wanted to do was throw something against the wall just to watch it shatter. Cassandra didn't like to express her frustrations in violence, but sometimes, Bruce knew she needed a group of bad guys to demolish. 

Silent as a whisper of death, Cass crept forward with her dangerous fists clenched. 

The fight didn't last long at all. Cass's abilities to fight were and always would be beyond comparison. Even compared to Bruce. He watched her take out each man with a quick series of punches aimed precisely where she wanted to hit and not a single hairsbreadth off. They didn't even get the chance to yell or call for help on that walkie of theirs. One moment they were playing what looked to be some sort of improvised version of go-fish with a classic 52 pack of playing cards created out of boredom, and the next they were taken out of commission by what could possibly be their newest worst nightmare. Cass brushed her hands together in front of her, silently saying that she had taken out the trash, and that it was Tim's turn.

Tim, for his part, didn't need to be told verbally of what he was expected to do. He just immediately ran past her, giving her a brief good natured pat on her shoulder as he did, and started to feel along the wall. 

It was always entrancing to watch Tim figure out complicated technology. The boy was a genius. He knew the in's and out's of 1s and 0s better than most everybody. Bruce was sure, no… he was _confident_ that it was only a matter of time before Tim's abilities surpassed his own. 

If Tim hadn't already surpassed him. 

However, tackling a complicated problem alone could take time. Time they couldn't waste. Bruce stepped forward and looked at the hidden hand scanner Tim had discovered under a discreetly placed section of drywall. Tim looked up to him, a question in his eyes, and Bruce thought it over. 

They could try using the handprints of the men Cass took down and risk their biological data not being in the system and setting off an alarm, or they could spend more time taking the scanner apart and searching for the right wires to trick.

Risky or long. Quick or safe. 

Bruce gave a nod, letting his shoulders fall ever so slightly as he lowered himself to his knees and pulled out a set of tools from his utilities belt. Tim nodded back, his eyebrows falling down to umbrella over his masked eyes in concentration. 

It took time. The panel was good. Better than many that Bruce had run into during his years of Batman. Unhackable, most would say. 

Those people haven't met Tim though, and neither had the now picked and flashing green handprint scanner. 

There was a mechanical whirr of practically silent pistons and locks becoming undone. Bruce and Tim stepped back to watch the section of wall lower into the floor, showing a set of stairs that went down directly in front of them for several steps, then turned 180° to continue going down out of sight. 

The walkie behind them crackled to life; a voice asking what that noise was. 

The voice sounded recognizably American, which made it clear they weren't actually dealing with the actual mafia. Just a group of crime-doers that probably descended from the original gangsters in Las Vegas, only difference was that their ancestors didn't make it big and decided Blüdhaven was much easier to do crime in. 

" _I told you I didn't want any interruptions_ !" The man yelled through the walke speakers. " _I'm not done with him yet_ -"

Bruce felt his heart clench at the sounds that followed that followed. A Spark of electricity. A _scream_. 

Bruce disregarded the walkie... _forced_ himself to. One month, seven days, fourteen hours, and thirteen minutes since Dick's kidnapping, and Bruce was sprinting down the stairs, his feet barely touching the ground as he went. His movement's as silent as a owl's feathers, his cape flowing behind him like he controlled the shadows himself. 

Running down the staircase barely took any time at all. Within seconds, he found himself looking down one long hallway built like a bunker. Dick had to be in one of these rooms. He just _had_ to be. 

Heart in his throat, Bruce, Tim, and Cass spread out into the floor, opening door after door, looking for Dick. Behind most of the doors were crates and boxes and bags and _piles_ of drugs, and as Bruce found himself slowly approaching the end of the secret basement he couldn't help but feel intense worry that he had gotten something wrong. That Dick wasn't here. 

But he _heard_ Dick scream over that walkie. Dick was alive. Dick _was_ here. 

He just had to find the correct room. 

And it was just his luck that the last door he opened was the correct one. 

One month, seven days, fourteen hours, and seventeen minutes. 

That was how long it took Bruce to get here, in this doorway, standing with widening eyes behind his cowl's lenses, watching as a man leaned over a table, his hands wrapped around something struggling and writhing in binds. Lining the walls were groups of people, all holding guns and looking comically shocked as Batman barged into the room. Across the room, sitting in a chair to have the best view of the present torture session, was a big rat of man smoking a cigar.

And Bruce saw Dick. He saw Dick's bare chest, his hands tugging on the binds keeping him pinned, his ankles twisting as a natural instinct while fighting to breathe. He saw the man holding Dick's neck between his squeezing fingers. He saw the dried blood splattered over Dick's body. He saw the missing fingernails. He saw the cuts and burns and the broken nose. He saw the pale skin. The weight loss. Every single rib countable if you smeared away the blood.

Red.

He saw red. 

He charged in, his teeth grinding so hard that Leslie would be furious to keep himself from screaming, and punched the man choking… _torturing_ Dick across the jaw. The man went flying, roughly hitting the ground as Dick gurgled out a desperate gasp. The rat of a man stood up from his chair, eyes wide and jugular waggling under his butted chin. Immediately, guns were aimed at Batman, thugs all here to protect his boss while he watched what must be his daily torture session. The fat, pathetic excuse of a mafia boss—who Bruce would call a scumbag if that didn't insult all scumbags across the universe—scrambled backwards, lips flapping in a short, flipped sentence that Bruce had heard many, many times to where he almost had to hold back an eye roll. 

But he was too _furious_ to roll his eyes now. Not even as the gangster screamed "GET HIM!"

In fact, he hardly even heard those two words yelled at him with a thick sausage of a finger pointed his way. All he could hear were the strangled _sobs_ of Dick behind him as he ran forward, swinging his cape to catch the first bullet, throwing his fist to hit the gangster right across his cheek. From then on, it was chaos. Bullets everywhere, shouts and cries harmonizing with the sparks. The singular light above ended up being blown out by a stray bullet around the same time Bruce heard Cass and Tim finally enter. 

Bruce worked like an angel of death. 

No, not of death. 

His blows as if lightning struck the air around him, his will like howls of wind summoned from hell itself. He was the conjuror of destruction, of danger, of catastrophe. He was worse than death. 

He was the crumbling tower, sent to reign down upon those who had thought they could climb too high. 

He blinked, and he found everything silent besides the hands grasping on his shoulder, trying to tug him away from the beaten and broken face of the gangster. Bruce hadn't even realized that time had passed. That the battle was over besides him punching this monster over and over and over in the face. Disgusted—with the man, with himself—he shoved him away and watched so heartlessly it almost frightened him as the unconscious rat splattered onto the grimy floor in a mess of sweaty and bruised limbs. 

He turned towards Cass, her sympathy and understanding lining every inch of her frame, even with the black kevlar covering her features. He turned past her, remembering the whole reason he was here in the first place even though he had never really forgotten. He quickly rushed towards the table Dick was still restrained down onto. 

His eyes were closed, his chest heaving, trickles of water escaping the corners of his eyes and trailing down the sides of his head in more than a month's worth of dust, grime, and blood. His fists were clenched, toes curled, muscles that showed too detailed under the lack of body fat straining weakly against the leather belts keeping him immobile.

Bruce reached forward without thinking and placed his hands on the belt keeping Dick's left arm pinned down above his head. 

Before finding Dick, Bruce had expected a great, many things. A body on one end, a simply trapped and relatively unharmed bored young man on the other. Batman was known amongst the superhero community for always having a plan A through Z for every possible scenario and outcome.

Yet, for some reason, he hadn't ever expected Dick to flinch under Bruce's touch during rescue. 

It was like he was suddenly touching fire the moment Dick cried out, the moment Bruce's fingers just barely brushed the inside of his wrist. He yanked his hands away and stared with wide eyes as Dick broke into more sobs. 

"Stop," Dick hiccuped through his cries; his voice rough like a thousand shards of glass, "stop, _please_. No more- I can't-"

The young man dissolved into bubbly suds made out of tears, babbling and begging and beginning to openly weep as he begged for the pain to end. 

"I can't- stop- I- puh-please! Please, no more- n-no more- I _can't-_ "

The realization crashed into Bruce like a rocket. Dick… didn't realize rescue had come. All he had known for the past month and- _and_ was pain and torture and blood. Did he have any hope of rescue left after all this time? Or did he lose it weeks ago, when help had still not come? How long did it take for his quips to fall flat? For his screams to no longer remain silenced? How long did he force himself to stay strong before he must have come to the false realization that no one was coming, and that he would die here?

How long ago had Bruce failed Dick? 

Because Dick not only didn't realize he was _safe_ now, but he thought Bruce would hurt him somehow by simply touching the inside of his wrist. 

Dick thought he was going to be tortured. Again. And again. And again. No hope of help. So much pain and suffering in his soul that it ending here and now wasn't even a thought at the back of his mind, hidden behind tearfully closed eyes. 

Bruce took off his cowl, ignoring the way Tim began to whisper urgently towards Cass and into the comm unit. 

"Dick," Bruce tried, forcing his voice to remain calm and soothing, locking all the worry and gravel into a keyed box at the back of his throat. He approached slowly now, but Dick continued to cry anyways. " _Chum_ , I'm here."

A broken gasp. Bruce couldn't take it. 

He reached forward again and gently curled his fingers into Dick's blood matted and sweaty hair, stroking softly like he had always done whenever one of his children ended up in a hospital bed. Dick cried out like he'd been stabbed the moment Bruce touched him, but Bruce didn't back away this time. 

"It's okay, Dick," he soothed, rubbing Dick's scalp through his thick locks like how Dick had always loved because... because Bruce didn't _know_ what to do now. "It's me, it's Bruce."

Dick continued sobbing, no recognition. Nothing. Just pain and sorrow and fear. 

"Chum, open your eyes-"

Heaving breaths rattling a chest splattered in red. 

Bruce didn't know what to do. He didn't know what to do. He didn't know what to _do-_

But luckily, Tim came up then, giving a smart idea like he always did. 

"We should sedate him," Tim said, his voice barely above a sacred whisper. "Get him at least home and comfortable."

"He's hurting," Cass added, "and scared. Sleep will be good."

Bruce looked down at Dick who was still struggling and crying and babbling and begging words that needn't be spoken now. Not ever again. He took a deep breath then retreated from Dick's hair and reached into his utility belt for a small vial of sedative that he kept on him for a variety of reasons. It didn't take long to take out and fill a clean syringe then tap the sides to get the bubbles out. It was almost methodical to do so. _This_ : he knew how to do. He could be given a drug and a needle and someone to stick it in and he could do it without missing a beat. 

But his heart still skipped one when he looked back up to Dick. 

Knowing that it would be evermore unpleasant the longer he allowed this to go on, he shut off the fatherly part of his brain that just wanted to gather Dick up and smother him in forehead kisses. He reached forward and ignored Dick's rekindled cries as he tilted Dick's head to the side to get a better aim at his neck. 

Dick's begging and sobbing increased in pitch and desperateness the moment Bruce stuck the needle into his neck, but thankfully the sedative worked quickly, and soon Dick was little more than a still bag of bones, limp against the table, eyelids flickering in what was perhaps an immediate nightmare.

"What the hell?" A new voice called.

"Oh shit," another agreed. 

It seemed that Jason and Duke had arrived. 

Bruce didn't welcome them though. Dick was… none of his kids were more important than the other, but Dick's situation called for more attention. He quickly got the straps off from Dick's wrists, sparing a thankful glance towards Duke as the young man ran forward to undo the ones on Dick's ankles. The moment Dick was finally free of his binds, Bruce carefully began to cradle Dick towards his body, holding him like a parent would their young child. Head tucked under Bruce's chin, back supported by one of Bruce's arms, legs curled around the other. Bruce held him as tightly and as closely as he dared, listening to nothing but the sound of him breathing as he turned to the others, noting how both Steph and Damian had finally arrived as well, covered in questionable stains and both looking openly upset and shocked. 

Bruce could count the amount of times on one hand that Damian had looked that small, young, and lost. Trust Dick to always be the apple of that boy's eye, trust Dick to be the one to get Damian to look that way. Like a scared, thirteen year old child. 

"Let's go home," Bruce said, and they all agreed one by one. It most certainly would be a pain to get back out of the building without being detected, but Bruce could sense a new fire inside each and every one of them. 

The quickest way out was through the front doors. The people inside this building hurt one of their own. They were all itching for a fight now, more than ever. 

Who was Bruce to stand in their way? This building could crumble to the ground for all he cared. 

As long as he got Dick and the rest of the family home, safe and sound and on the road to recovery, nothing else mattered. 

Not a single god damned thing.

**Author's Note:**

> welcome to the end notes. refreshments are over there and the comment button is down there... have cookie in exchange for a comment?
> 
> thanks for reading!!!


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